NOBODY WAS ARRESTED ON ACCOUNT OF SHARING MARTIN AMIDU’S ARTICLES ON BAWKU MEDIATION
NOBODY WAS ARRESTED ON ACCOUNT OF SHARING MARTIN AMIDU’S ARTICLES ON BAWKU MEDIATION.
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
I read in the mainstream online media published news reports attributed to a press release by the Nayiri in which an Executive Member of the Mamprugu Youth Association, Alhaji Inusah Abdul-Majeed Badigamsira, was allegedly arrested on 23 December 2025 “merely for sharing an epistle authored” by me on the Asantehene’s Bawku Mediation Report while I walk a freeman. The relevant portion of the press release stated in the second paragraph as follows:
“Equally reprehensible is the 2:00 a.m. abduction and arrest on 23 December of an Executive Member of the Mamprugu Youth Association, Alhaji Inusah Abdul-Majeed Badigamsira, merely for sharing an epistle authored by Mr Martin Amidu on the so-called mediation report, while the author himself remains untouched, exposing a stark pattern of selective justice....”.
I cannot by any imagination believe that the law enforcement agencies arrested Alhaji Badigamsira on 23 December 2025 only for sharing any or both of the two articles I had written and published on 15 December 2025 on the impending presentation of Bawku Mediation Report the next day which was dated 14 December 2025 or the article on my reaction to the Bawku Mediation Report dated 18 December 2025 because none of the two articles violated any provision of the criminal laws of Ghana.
The intelligence at my disposal is that Alhaji Badigamsira and the late Alhaji Mashud Abiola had been on suspicion since 2021 for the commission of various criminal offences and his arrest on 23 December 2025 was for the suspected commission of an offence. The inquisitive reader should google the name Alhaji Abdul-Majeed of Walewale, Ghana, and read the uploaded materials on his Facebook account. Alhaji Badigamsira did not share my article but a news report of it: See, Bawku mediation has no legal basis, appears as a gargantuan political scam — Martin Amidu. One Counselor (sic) Dyon’s full article on the conflict then followed.
In any case, the security agency or agencies which arrested Alhaji Badigamsira on the dawn of 23 December 2025 had an obligation to show him his warrant of arrest containing the reasons for the arrest or if he was arrested without a warrant to be informed in a language he understands of the reasons and to produce him before a court of law within forty-eight hours of his arrest and detention or an Ex Parte order for his continued detention obtained as it happened in the case of Alhaji Seidu Abagre at an Adenta court of law on 26 December 2025. I believe that no court would have ordered his continued detention merely because he shared any of my articles before and after the Bawku Mediation Report was presented to the public at the Jubilee House on 16 December 2025. It is, therefore, mischievous for any person or group of persons who published the press release in the name of the Nayiri to have referred to any of my articles as the reason for his arrest whilst I walk free.
My article dated 14 December 2025 and published in the online media on 15 December 2025 stated clearly the positions and roles I had played in the identity and intractable Bawku Conflict during my public service including from 1983 as the PNDC Deputy Secretary for the Upper East Region when the PNDC promulgated the Chieftaincy (Restoration of Status of Chiefs) Law, (PNDCL 75) on 21 December 1983 and the subsequent enskinment of the present Bawku-Naba in April 1984 during my watch as the acting PNDC Secretary for the Upper East Region and Chairman of its Regional Security Council (REGSEC) from February 1984 to October 1984.
I would not have presided over the Upper East Regional Administration for the enskinment of the Bawku-Naba to take place if I had any legal or principled reason against PNDCL 75 or the enskinment. I also did not hide the fact that I was the lawyer for the present Bawku-Naba when the Bawku Mamprusis decided to engage Akufo-Addo, Prempeh & Co to challenge the constitutionality of PNDCL 75 in the Supreme Court, at a time when Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was the Attorney-General and the Attorney-General was the 2nd Defendant in the suit.
None of the two articles I wrote and published on 15 December 2025 and 19 December 2025 respectively were against the enskinment of the present Bawku-Naba as Paramount Chief of the Bawku Traditional Area. The Bawku-Naba was gazetted as the Paramount Chief of the Bawku Traditional Area under the PNDC and was the subsisting Bawku-Naba on the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution on 7 January 1993 including the Transitional Provisions to the 1992 Constitution, particularly Section 34 (3), (4) and (5) and Section 36 thereof. Consequently, upon the coming into force of the Constitution on 7 January 1993 the status quo ante was that the Bawku-Naba was lawfully nominated and enskinned as the Bawku-Naba and he is still the only Bawku-Naba pursuant to Article 270 (1) (2) and (3) of the Constitution.
The first article I published on 15 December 2025 was speaking to the President through the wind to rethink what he intended to do on the evening of 16 December 2025 with the presentation of the Bawku Mediation Report which had no basis under the Constitution and the law. The second article published on 19 December 2025 was a sequel to the first containing my reaction to the Bawku Mediation Report after the presentation at the Jubilee House and the government’s acceptance of the findings and recommendation of the Bawku Mediation Report. I demanded from the government the constitutional and legal grounds for the appointment of the mediator which I thought was unconstitutional.
I have contended all along that the President who had promised the Bawku-Naba and his subjects to enforce the existing law on who is the Bawku-Naba under the 1992 Constitution and in accordance with pronouncements he had made on 3 February 2024 at the Bawku-Naba’s palace had no lawful grounds after he became President to have appointed a mediator on the recognised status quo under the Constitution which allowed more citizens to have lost their lives needlessly through the continued violence of the Bawku conflict between 7 January 2025 and 16 December 2025.
Alhaji Badigamsira certainly does not share the views I have held since the promulgation of PNDCL 75 on 21 December 1983 for which reason I agreed to be the lawyer for the Bawku-Naba at the Supreme Court in 2003 when the other side engaged the sitting Attorney-General’s private law firm to commence the action on their behalf. Alhaji Badigamsira could not, therefore, have been arrested for sharing any or both of the two articles I wrote before his arrest on 23 December 2025.
In my article which was published on 23 December 2025 after the arrest of Alhaji Badigamsira I stated that:
‘... One cannot say that the findings and recommendation of such a mediator are binding on the chiefdoms in the Bawku conflict without being guilty of double standards or double speak. What is binding is the status quo recognized under the 1992 Constitution on the Bawku Chieftaincy Affairs which as candidate for the Presidency, John Mahama repeated on 3 February 2024 at the Bawku Naba’s palace that: “...there is no chieftaincy conflict in Bawku because there is only one known King, Asigri Abugrago Azoka II.” Enforce the law!’
Whosoever wrote the press release for the Nayiri knowing too well that, like my late parents, the Nayiri does not read or write in the English language has rather done a disservice to the credibility of the message sought to be conveyed on his behalf by evoking this response from me. It also shows either that the authors of the press release did not carefully and critically read my articles under reference or that they were clutching at straws in writing the press release leading them to rope my name into it to gain credibility. That of course does not speak well of the authors of the press release on behalf of the Nayiri.
The law requires that such important documents prepared in the name of the Nayiri are either signed on his behalf by his Secretary or have an accompanying jurat verifying that the documents were read over to him in a language he understands and he appeared to understand the content before affixing his mark to the documents. The media has widely published the content of the press release attributed to the Nayiri in which my name was employed as a battering ram to support a fake allegation leaving me no option than to respond to the misinformation.
My position that there is no constitutional or other legal grounds on which to appoint a mediator in the Bawku Affairs has been known to the lawyers involved in the Bawku mediation who sought my views on the appointment of the mediator in 2023 and on his reappointment in 2025. If I were the lawyer for any of the chiefdoms involved, I would have raised the issue of jurisdiction as a preliminary matter just as I did in the Supreme Court in 2003. Once the mediation concluded and the government announced a public presentation of the Mediation Report at the Jubilee House, my rights accrued as a citizen of Ghana to ask questions, which I did in my first article dated 14 December 2025.
Unbeknownst to me, Mr. Cletus Avoka who never spoke to me directly on the mediation had apparently spoken on the jurisdictional issue and incurred the umbrage of the mediator during his presentation of the Bawku Mediation Report publicly on 16 December 2025. I, of course, could not be daunted as a citizen of Ghana from reacting to the presentation of the Bawku Mediation Report which was not the result of charity by the mediator to Ghana but a charge on the public purse for which a citizen may demand the legal basis of the mediation, the quantum of expenditure, and accountability thereto.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
27 December 2025